Louisiana Territory

The Louisiana Territory was an administrative district of New France, the colonies of the Kingdom of France on the North American mainland. The territory consisted of many of the states in the United States Midwest, with New Orleans in the present-day state of Louisiana being capital after 1722. Robert de La Salle named the territory for King Louis XIV of France in 1682, and the region stretched from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to the border with Canada in the north, and from the Appalachian Mountains in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west. The region was granted to Spain in 1762 in the Treaty of Fontainebleau as a reward for Spain's participation in the Seven Years' War on the French side, with the British gaining control of New France. The territory would later be returned to France under Napoleon due to the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800, in exchange for Spain regaining Tuscany in Italy, but problems in Europe led to a lack of interest in Louisiana by the French. On 30 April 1803, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States for $15,000,000 in the "Louisiana Purcahse", and the various territories would be organized as states until New Mexico's statehood was achieved in 1912.